Advertising Your Server

How do you advertise a Minecraft server? The answer is often gatekept, since winning strategies become saturated when more server owners find out about them. Below you will find a collection of known advertising methods, as well as information about their effectiveness.

Social Media

Nothing beats user-generated content; in other words: producing content yourself that showcases aspects of your Minecraft server. To create videos about your server, it’s recommended to use software like OBS to record your gameplay. Flashback mod is a great in-game editor for getting clips of your server. Lastly, you will need an editor. CapCut is free, while paid editors like Vegas-Pro provide more features.

TikTok

The most effective platform for posting content is likely TikTok, since your visibility and discovery is much higher on that platform. Some servers have gone viral on TikTok and gained thousands of new players, all from a video that took a couple hours to create. When posting to TikTok, it’s important to use proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to ensure players can find your server with TikTok’s search feature, which is more powerful than you might think. Hashtags are less important, other than SEO purposes.
From the grapevine of TikTok creators, it’s been said to never upload clips from your PC. Always send the video to your phone and use the TikTok app to post it, or else it may have trouble hitting the For You Page. The data has not proven this, but many first-hand accounts back it up. Better be safe than sorry, as re-uploading previously posted clips also blocks your video from hitting the For You Page. Make sure your video is in 9:16 aspect ratio, the volume levels are appropriate, and always use music from TikTok, not externally. Voice-overs seem to improve engagement, though you can use an AI voiceover from ElevenLabs if you do not want to use your own voice. Put it all together, and you should have a good video!

Successful Creators:

• BendersMC - Showcased an extremely unique server with fun short-form videos.
• TavernSMP - Consistently showcased a high quality server and built an audience with good content.
• OpheLovie - Grew an audience by consistently posting quality videos and showcasing unique aspects of the server like abilities and furniture.

Youtube

Youtube is somewhat more difficult to be discovered on, and places an emphasis on long-form content. If you post shorts, you should still record in 9:16 aspect ratio, but for horizontal videos the aspect ratio should be 16:9. Higher performing videos on this platform usually feature some sort of challenge, like “100 players doing X challenge.” It usually takes a long time for creators to become successful on Youtube, so don’t expect to go viral instantly! Focus on building your audience, and growing into your niche. For shorts, expect a similar process to making TikTok videos, since people will find your videos from scrolling, or popping up on their homepage.

Successful Creators:

• Hoplite - Grew into a massive server by consistently posting engaging content.
• TheMisterEpic - Exposes P2W servers while advertising his server in every video.

Reddit

Reddit is difficult to be discovered on, as most of the Minecraft server communities are filled with mostly server owners. To be discovered here, it’s essential to showcase unique aspects of your server, in a concise and engaging advertisement. Though you may only attract 1-2 players each post at maximum, over a long period of time you can grow a community. This method has become deeply oversaturated, but still worth doing. Ensure to follow the subreddit’s rules so your post is not removed.

Subreddits for Advertising:

• r/minecraftserver
• r/mcservers
• r/minecraftserverfinder

Instagram

While this platform is mostly dominated by Minecraft tutorials and showcases of builds, you can work that into ways to advertise your server, like ArdaCraft has. Instagram Reels have a similar format to TikTok and Youtube Shorts, in that it’s essential to post engaging, short-form content that stops people from mindlessly scrolling and captures their attention. Make sure to funnel viewers into your server with a good Call-to-Action.

Voting Sites

When you search “Minecraft Servers” in your browser, you will see several sites called server lists. These sites showcase Minecraft servers with descriptions, links, photos, and other information about servers with search features to find specific gamemodes. If you set up votifier, players can vote for your server and those votes will be sent to your server for processing by a vote listener, like VotingPlugin, which allows players to receive configurable rewards for voting for your server. This allows your server to get more discoverability by ranking higher on these sites as more players vote for your server. Unfortunately, the top slots on these server lists are often taken by the same large servers, who pay prices of up to $20,000 a month to be number 1. While the top slots are unaffordable for most servers, ranking as high as possible through voting can be a good option to get organic traffic to your server.
Other features like vote parties, custom item rewards, and vote reminders can incentivize players to vote for your server consistently.
FindMCServer is a server list that is officially verified by Mojang Enforcement. If your server complies with the EULA, being featured on this list shows potential players that you take player safety seriously, and that your server has the stamp of approval from Mojang. However, it can take from 8 months to an entire year to get verified by both GamerSafer, the proprietors of FindMCServer, and Mojang.

Minehut

Minehut is a server list and server host combined. For the purposes of advertising your existing Minecraft server, we will discuss the features of their lobby and proxy services. When you purchase a monthly subscription to the External Server Plan, you can setup a second proxy server and use Minehut’s API in your startup flags, so that your server is accessible from Minehut’s lobby. Your server will be featured in the Minehut server list, and you can use /ad <server name> <advertisement> to advertise directly to the thousands of players in Minehut’s lobby. By tweaking your ad to be engaging, use color codes, and follow the trends Minehut players are looking for, you can quickly grow your server. Retaining those players is another matter entirely, and depends on the quality of your server. Also, using multiple proxy servers will desync your player count, but by using RedisBungee, you can sync your players. This is useful for consistency when pinging the server, in your tablist, and with certain chat formatting plugins.

Note

Creating another proxy server to use with Minehut’s External Server Plan is not provided by Minehut. This WILL make your server’s infrastructure more complex. Optionally, you can proxy your server exclusively through Minehut, but if their network goes down, so does yours.

Other Advertising Practices

In order to break away from the pack, a combination of the above or other creative ways of advertising will help ensure your success.

• DM Advertising (NOT RECOMMENDED)
  This is one of the most annoying, shameful advertising practices that you can engage in. Nobody wants to be solicited, and Discord server owners especially hate when solicitors show up to poach their members. This will likely get you banned from any Discord server you try to do this in.

• SEO
  It is highly advisable to build or commission a website for your server. It functions as a hub of information for your server, as well as natural traffic from search engines. By utilizing keywords to optimize your website for search terms, you can drive traffic directly from the web and funnel them to your server. Never understimate the power of SEO. Additionally, you can create a documentation site (like this one) for useful guides about gameplay mechanics on your server. This is a great place to use keywords to optimize your site, since documentation is usually quite thorough.

• Giveaways
  According to Mojang, real world currency giveaways and payouts are NOT ALLOWED. Not only that, but according to US law, random chance giveaways are illegal. Exercise extreme caution when hosting giveaways on your server, as any kind of real world currency payouts are dodgy at best. Make sure you read up on relevant laws, as well as the Minecraft Usage Guidelines. Giving away in-game items or server currency is usually okay, provided that you follow the rules.

• In Person Advertising
  One of the most creative ways you can advertise your server is in person advertising. Have you ever seen a billboard on a highway advertising a Minecraft server? What about a server that hands out brochures, flyers, etc. to people on the street? This could be the way you change the game, and build a personal connection with potential players.

Get Creative

Overall, the best way to advertise your Minecraft server is by combining several strategies based on their effectiveness. Showcase a unique mechanic or benefit that only exists on your server. Show off your high quality gameplay, custom items or abilities, and/or something your server does better than others. Don’t put other servers down in order to try to push yours to the top; that only makes YOU look bad. Lastly, make engaging content that hooks the viewer/reader, and funnels them directly to typing in your server IP into their Minecraft client. Good luck!